How scrap metal scavengers have revived Lebanon’s garbage crisis

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Updated 22 June 2021
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How scrap metal scavengers have revived Lebanon’s garbage crisis

  • The hunt for metal is taking place amid soaring unemployment and a dollar shortage in the small Mediterranean country

Lebanon’s waste management system is the newest target in a trend of metal thefts that officials believe are being carried out by residents rendered desperate by the country’s unprecedented economic collapse.

The latest casualty? One of two landfills servicing the greater Beirut area was forced to shut down over the past week because of rogue scavengers.

The landfill, located in Jdeideh, on the outskirts of the capital, had become a hunting ground for residents scouring for metal and other valuables that can fetch a hefty price on the market.

For decades, Lebanon has been producing more waste than it could manage, culminating in mountains of trash filling streets in 2015 as mass protests erupted condemning the government’s failure to come up with an effective waste management strategy.

Built in 2018 for what was supposed to be a temporary fix to the region’s endemic garbage problem, the landfill has undergone numerous expansions as authorities failed to conjure up a sustainable solid waste management plan.

Instead, successive governments have elected to keep piling trash higher, reaching a height of some 20 meters.

Toufic Kazmouz, the project manager at a local contracting company managing the landfill, told Arab News that the landfill was being expanded while still receiving 1,200 tons of garbage per day before being forced to shut down.

“This is definitely not a sustainable solution to the garbage problem, but the scavengers have made it even worse and have forced us to close shop,” Kazmouz said.

Hundreds of people were trespassing into the landfill daily, he said, forcing the company to halt both construction and operations last week.

According to Kazmouz, scavengers would wait patiently for a dump truck to empty its load before entering the site, armed with plastic bags.

Several scuffles had erupted between scavengers and workers in an environment filled with heavy machinery and equipment.

“It’s simply become an unsafe work environment for everyone involved,” Kazmouz said.

With the landfill shut down, piles of garbage have lined the streets of the Metn and Kesourwan districts after the waste management company Ramco stopped collecting trash.

“We stopped collecting trash because we had nowhere to dispose of it,” Walid Bou Saad, director of Ramco, told Arab News.

Scavengers have forced Kazmouz to shut down the landfill twice since April, despite both the “Internal Security Forces and Lebanese intelligence sending patrols to cordon off the area.”

Discussions are currently ongoing with the Interior Ministry to increase security, he said.

“Municipality workers are expected to be stationed at the site starting today, but we’ll face the same problem again later,” Kazmouz noted.

The hunt for metal is taking place amid soaring unemployment and a dollar shortage in the small Mediterranean country that has caused the local currency to lose some 90 percent of its value while the prices of basic goods and commodities skyrocket.

“It’s metal,” Kazmouz pointed out. “People are really suffering and looking for any means to make some money.” 

Metal has become an increasingly valuable commodity in Lebanon, with desperate residents even stealing manhole covers and metal supports from electricity pylons.

Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud told AFP in February that he attributed the theft of manhole covers to the fact that they “are made out of cast iron, which has become much more expensive.”

The covers, weighing up to 60 kg, can fetch up to $100 when sold for scrap. At the current black-market rate, this is equivalent to some LL1.5 million, or more than double the current monthly minimum wage.

The dire situation has also pushed thieves to target Lebanon’s already deficient electricity grid, causing the collapse of a 55-meter pylon connecting one of the country’s four power plants to the region of the Bekaa.

After its metal supports had been stolen, the pylon was no match for the high winds that blew across Lebanon in the winter season.


Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands

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Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands

At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents
Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps

ATHENS: Some islands in the southeast of the Aegean sea, including Rhodes, are seeing an increase in migrants arriving by boat from Turkiye, Greek migration and asylum minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said Tuesday.
“The southeast of the Aegean and the island of Rhodes are experiencing migratory pressure right now,” he said on public television station ERT, though he said the increase does not appear to be linked to rising tensions in the Middle East.
At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents and local authorities.
According to local media Rodiaki, more than 700 migrants arrived during the last week of October.
Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps on the mainland or in other islands.
Previously, Aegean islands further north such as Lesbos and Samos had received the brunt of migrants crossing from Turkish shores.
Crete, which has likewise seen an increase in arrivals from Libya, also needs to build facilities to process migrants.
Greece has seen a 25 percent increase this year in the number of people fleeing war and poverty, with a 30 percent increase alone to Rhodes and the south-east Aegean, according to the Migration Ministry.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 48,158 arrivals have been recorded so far in 2024, of which around 42,000 arrived by boat and 6,000 by crossing the land frontier with Turkiye.
“The camps on the islands have an occupancy rate of 100 percent. But on the mainland they are only 55 percent full, which provides a margin in the event of an increase in arrivals on the islands,” Panagiotopoulos said.

Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

Updated 10 min 54 sec ago
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Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

  • Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s army-backed government on Tuesday accused neighboring Chad of supplying arms to rebel militias, likely referring to the paramilitary forces it is battling.
The northeast African country has been engulfed by war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the regular army, led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Justice minister Muawiya Osman said Burhan’s administration had lodged the complaint against Chad at the African Union.
Speaking to reporters, including AFP, Osman said the government demanded compensation and accused Chad of “supplying arms to rebel militias” and causing “harm to Sudanese citizens.”
“We will present evidence to the relevant authorities,” he added from Port Sudan, where Burhan relocated after fighting spread to the capital, Khartoum.
Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF.
“We do not support any of the factions that are fighting on Sudanese territory — we are in favor of peace,” foreign minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said at the time.
The United Nations has been using the Adre border crossing between the two countries to deliver humanitarian aid.
Sudan had initially agreed to keep the crossing open for three months, a period set to expire on November 15. Authorities in Khartoum have yet to decide whether to extend the arrangement.
The Sudanese war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders.


Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

Updated 29 min 4 sec ago
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Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

  • The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations

ANKARA: An explosion at an oil refinery in northwestern Turkiye on Tuesday left at least 12 employees slightly injured, the company said. A fire at the facility was quickly brought under control.
The Turkish Petroleum Refineries company, TUPRAS, said a fire broke out at its facilities in Izmit, in Kocaeli province, during maintenance work on a compressor. The company’s emergency teams responded immediately to the incident, it said in a statement.
The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations, the company said.
The company said the unit where the incident occurred “was deactivated in a controlled manner” and that other operations at the refinery were “continuing as normal.”
Earlier, Tahir Buyukakin, the mayor for Kocaeli told private NTV television that the blast occurred during a drill. The fire was quickly brought under control by the company’s own crews and no request for help was made, he said.
Video footage from the site showed smoke rising from the refinery, which is one of Turkiye’s largest. Izmit is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Istanbul.
The Borsa Istanbul stock exchange temporarily halted trading of TUPRAS shares, until the company provides a detailed explanation of the incident.


Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

Updated 42 min 15 sec ago
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Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

BEIRUT: At least one Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in a beach town south of Beirut on Tuesday, Lebanese state media said, as other deadly strikes hit scattered locations across the country and armed group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel.
The attack on the beach town of Jiyyeh left a massive smoke column billowing out of an apartment building. It was not immediately clear if the strike was an assassination attempt, and no evacuation warning was given before it was carried out.
The Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been exchanging fire for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war, but hostilities have escalated over the last six weeks. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them since late September, according to health authorities.
Israeli strikes on Tuesday also killed five people near the city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, including two killed in a strike on a car, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Lebanon’s state news agency said on Tuesday that it estimated Israeli air strikes and widespread detonation of homes had destroyed more than 40,000 housing units in the country’s border region.


Iran says killed eight militants since attack on police in province bordering Pakistan

Updated 05 November 2024
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Iran says killed eight militants since attack on police in province bordering Pakistan

  • Militants from the Jaish Al-Adl group killed 10 police officers during a raid in Sistan-Baluchistan province on October 26
  • Sistan-Baluchistan, which straddles border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces

TEHRAN: Iran’s military has killed eight militants in an operation in the restive southeast since a deadly attack last month on a police station, state media reported Tuesday.
Militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish Al-Adl group killed 10 police officers during a raid on October 26 in Sistan-Baluchistan province — one of the deadliest attacks in the region in recent months.
Sistan-Baluchistan, which straddles the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces.
It has long been a flashpoint for cross-border attacks by separatists and extremists, opposed to the authorities in Iran.
Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Shafahi said “a total of eight terrorists have been killed” since the beginning of operations in the province, according to the official IRNA news agency on Tuesday.
“Fourteen other terrorists have been arrested,” including key figures involved in the attack, he said, adding security forces seized weapons and ammunition.
Shortly after the attack in Taftan county, some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran, a report on the Tasnim news agency said four militants had been killed and four others arrested.
Late on Monday, IRNA quoted Guards ground forces commander Mohammad Pakpour as saying the attackers “were not Iranian,” though he did not specify their nationalities.
In early October, at least six people including police officers were killed in two separate attacks in the province.
Jaish Al-Adl said on Telegram they had carried out the attacks.
Formed in 2012 by Baluch separatists, the group is proscribed as a “terrorist organization” by both Iran and the United States.